


These Things They Flow

by Nokomis



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Batman: The Animated Series
Genre: F/F, Sex Pollen, set loosely in B:TAS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-24
Updated: 2017-06-24
Packaged: 2018-11-18 13:28:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11291616
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nokomis/pseuds/Nokomis
Summary: Harley Quinn asks Batgirl for help.





	These Things They Flow

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on LJ [here](http://nokomis305.livejournal.com/149258.html)

“You’ve gots to help me!”

Babs turned quickly on her heel, throwing her hands up in preparation for a blow that never came. Instead, Harley Quinn just stood there on the ledge, teetering from heel to toe and wringing her hands.

“What?” Babs said, squaring her shoulders so that her cape whipped around her legs a little more authoritatively. 

“It ain’t a proud day for me, neither, but I needs your help,” Harley said, voice rising to a squeak. “It’s Mista Jay.”

Babs looked at Harley skeptically. “Did he hit you in the head? Harder than normal, I mean?”

Harley let out an annoyed pfft. “Don’t be all judgemental, Batsy. It’s just that he’s in danger and he won’t listen!”

Babs blinked. “So you want me to... save the Joker. From danger.”

“You masks ain’t that bright, are ya?” Harley said. “That’s what I’ve been sayin’.”

“What danger is the Joker in?” Babs said. The Joker had been laying low lately, and Batman had only been making cursory attempts to look for him, focusing instead on capturing the Arkham escapees that were actively hurting people, but if she could get his location, she could take him back in before he caused harm. Being proactive for once, she thought, would save them all quite a bit of grief.

“It’s Ivy,” Harley said. “She thinks he’s doin’ me wrong.”

Babs privately thought Poison Ivy had more sense than most of Gotham’s other rogues put together. “And?”

“And she’s gonna kill him!” Harley wailed. “I tried to reason with her, I really did, but she told me, ‘Harl, I’m going to fix this problem once and for all.’ Then Mista Jay wouldn’t listen when I tried to warn him or nuttin’’”

Babs knew for a fact that this kind of thing just didn’t happen to Bruce or Dick. “What do you want me to do?” she tried again.

“I don’t know, you’re the hero,” Harley said. “Ain’t you Bats always got a plan for everything?”

Underneath the madness and harlequin suit and facepaint, there was a shrewd woman in there. 

“Of course I have a plan,” Babs said. “I just don’t think you’ll like it very much.”

“Does it involve going back to Arkham? Next week is chocolate pudding week,” Harley said. “Mista Jay or Ivy neither one will get me chocolate pudding when we’re out.”

“Maybe you will like it then,” Babs amended. “Now, where’s Mist– The Joker located?”

*

“You can’t tell Puddin’ that I snitched,” Harley said for the seventeenth time.

“I’ll restrain myself somehow,” Babs told her, peering through the small circle she’d cleaned off in the dirt-encrusted window of the Joker’s hideout, which was the building used to store parade floats.

She’d decided against calling in the situation to Batman. She knew exactly what he’d tell her, but she could handle this. Sure, the Joker was dangerous, but she had inside information and she had to act on it now. Instead, she let Alfred know about her coordinates, trusting him to pass it along just in case of disaster.

She kept an eye on Harley, though. She didn’t trust her.

“Ivy, neither. She’d be upset,” Harley fretted.

“Then why’d you tell me?” Babs burst out with.

“I don’t want my Puddin’ or my Buttercup gettin’ hurt,” Harley said in a tiny voice. “‘Specially not over me. They don’t always listen to me.”

Babs didn’t know what to say to that. It made Harley seem too human, and it was dangerous to empathize with someone you knew you were going to have to kick in the face down the road.

*

Babs’ plan was simple: capture the Joker before Ivy arrived, then capture Ivy. Harley would turn herself in on her own in repayment.

She’d taken both down before, but never all on her own and definitely not right after one another. She nervously shifted her weight and figured out the best way to take the Joker completely by surprise in his own hideout.

She could use Harley as a distraction, but she didn’t want to chance Harley having a change of heart. “Stay here,” she instructed, and leapt down into the building, hoping that the direct course of action would be the best.

Surprisingly, it went without a hitch. The Joker let out a startled cry, leaping off the ratty couch he was slumped on, spilling Fruit Loops all over his t-shirt and polka-dotted boxers.

Babs threw a batarang, hit him in the head, and sent him slumping to the ground. She quickly tied him up, checked him for weapons or any nasty surprises, and then stood, brushing her hands off on her uniform and thinking, “That was too easy.”

That was when the world went hazy.

*

When Babs gained a sense of awareness again, she was pressed up against Harley outside the warehouse, hands deep in Harley’s undone harlequin outfit and licking up Harley’s neck.

Judging from the reddening marks already on Harley’s neck, she’d been at it a while.

She leapt back, hand reflexively going to her face and finding - thank goodness - that her mask was still in place.

“What the hell!” she said.

“Batsy, are you back to being crabby?” Harley asked, lolling her head against the wall and looking at her with blown pupils. “Shame, I like you like this.”

“Like... like...” Crap. She’d been hit with one of Ivy’s pollens. From the sweet soreness radiating through her body, it had been a doozy.

“You aren’t gonna arrest me, are you?” Harley sounded supremely unconcerned with her fate. 

“What? I don’t...” Babs’ mind was racing. If Batman found out about this... Hell, if Dick found out, she’d never hear the end of it.

“We should at least finish,” Harley offered, sounding closer to rational than Babs could remember. Maybe Ivy had her ways of dealing with her after all.

“I think that’s a very bad idea,” Babs said. She was getting hazy memories of the past hour. From what she could recall... it hadn’t all been unpleasant. It hadn’t been one of the mind-controlling pollens, she thought, but one of the inhibition-lowering ones.

She suspected Ivy had planted it in the warehouse in preparation for the celebration after she took out the Joker.

“Partypooper,” Harley said, sticking out her tongue.

Babs could remember Ivy’s arrival now. She shook her head, remembering the harsh words Harley had thrown at Ivy, the way the Joker had remained unconscious throughout.

Babs had restrained Ivy, too, with the help of Harley. She recalled Harley’s sharp-bright grin over Ivy’s shoulder, how it had reminded her of Robin’s.

They’d been giddy when the left the two supervillains tied up in the warehouse, secured in some of the Joker’s own traps. Babs laughing over the thrill of taking down two of the biggest rogues, Harley elated over having both her lovers alive and well.

Harley had kissed her first.

And after that...

Babs shook her head. “This is not happening again,” she said sternly.

Harley bounced, standing upright and pulling her fingers through a mussed pigtail. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Batsy.”

Babs turned on her heel and marched off, pulling out her comm to call in the capture of the Joker and Poison Ivy. She pushed the memory of Harley wriggling happily against her firmly away.

It wouldn’t do to remember that the villains could have moments like that, too. It made it too easy to forget the terrible things they were capable of.


End file.
